Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarks at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly

27 September 2024

“Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is

at war, fighting for its life.

But after I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight. I decided to come here to speak for my people.

To speak for my country, to speak for the truth. And here’s the truth: Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Israel has made peace and will make peace again. Yet we face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against them.

These savage murderers, our enemies, seek not only to destroy us, but they seek to destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror. When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land.

Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.

And that is the choice we face today: the curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arab and Jew. In the days that followed that speech, the blessing I spoke of came into sharper focus.

A normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed closer than ever. But then came the curse of October 7th. Thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists from Gaza burst into Israel in pickup trucks and on motorcycles, and they committed unimaginable atrocities.

They savagely murdered 1,200 people. They raped and mutilated women. They beheaded men. They burned babies alive. They burned entire families alive—babies, children, parents, grandparents. It seems reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust.

Hamas kidnapped 251 people from dozens of different countries, dragging them into the dungeons of Gaza. Israel has brought home 154 of these hostages, including 117 who returned alive. I want to assure you, we will not rest until the remaining hostages are brought home too, and some of their family members are here with us today. I ask you to stand up.

With us is Eli Shtivi, whose son Idan was abducted from the Nova music festival. That was his crime—a music festival. And these murderous monsters took him. Koby Samerano, whose son Jonathan was murdered, and his corpse was taken into the dungeons, into the terror tunnels of Gaza—a corpse held hostage.

Salem Alatrash, whose brother Mohammad, a brave Arab Israeli soldier, was murdered. His body, too, was taken to Gaza. And so was the body of Ifat Haiman’s daughter, Inbar, who was brutally murdered at that same music festival.

With us is Sharon Sharabi, whose brother Yossi was murdered, and who prays for his older brother Eli, who is still held hostage in Gaza. And with us too is Yizhar Lifshitz from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a kibbutz that was wiped out by the terrorists.

Thankfully, we achieved the release of his mother, Yocheved, but his father, Oded, is still languishing in the underground terrorist hell of Hamas. I again promise you, we will return your loved ones home. We will not spare that effort until this holy mission is accomplished.

Ladies and gentlemen, the curse of October 7th began when Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, but it didn’t end there. Israel was soon forced to defend itself on six more war fronts organized by Iran. On October 8th, Hezbollah attacked us from Lebanon. Since then, they have fired over 8,000 rockets at our towns and cities, at our civilians, at our children. Two weeks later, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen launched drones and missiles at Israel, the first of 250 such attacks, including one yesterday aimed at Tel Aviv. Iran’s Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq have targeted Israel dozens of times over the past year as well.

Fueled by Iran, Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria perpetrated scores of attacks there and throughout Israel. And last April, for the first time ever, Iran directly attacked Israel from its own territory.

Firing 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at us. I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place—there is no place in Iran—that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East.

Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel’s soldiers have fought back with incredible courage and with heroic sacrifice. And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall: We are winning.

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For nearly a year, the brave men and women of the IDF have been systematically crushing Hamas’s terror army that once ruled Gaza. On October 7th, the day of that invasion into Israel, that terror army numbered nearly 40,000 terrorists. It was armed with more than 15,000 rockets. It had 350 miles of terror tunnels—an underground network bigger than the New York subway system—which they used to wreak havoc above and below ground.

A year later, the IDF has killed or captured more than half of these terrorists, destroyed over 90% of their rocket arsenal, and eliminated the key segments of their terror tunnel network.

In measured military operations, we destroyed nearly all of Hamas’s terror battalions—23 out of 24 battalions. Now, to complete our victory, we are focused on mopping up Hamas’s remaining fighting capabilities.

We are taking out senior terrorist commanders and destroying remaining terrorist infrastructure. But all the while, we remain focused on our sacred mission: bringing our hostages home, and we will not stop until that mission is complete.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, even with Hamas’s greatly diminished military capability, the terrorists still exercise some governing power in Gaza by stealing the food that we enable aid agencies to bring into Gaza.

Hamas steals the food, and then they hike the prices. They feed their bellies, and then they fill their coffers with money they extort from their own people. They sell the stolen food at exorbitant prices, and that’s how they stay in power. Well, this too has to end, and we’re working to bring it to an end.

And the reason is simple: because if Hamas stays in power, it will regroup, rearm, and attack Israel again and again and again, as it has vowed to do. So, Hamas has got to go.

Just imagine, for those who say Hamas has to stay, it has to be part of a post-war Gaza— imagine, in a post-war situation after World War II, allowing the defeated Nazis in 1945 to rebuild Germany? It’s inconceivable. It’s ridiculous. It didn’t happen then, and it’s not going to happen now.

This is why Israel will reject any role for Hamas in a post-war Gaza. We don’t seek to resettle Gaza. What we seek is a demilitarized and de-radicalized Gaza. Only then can we ensure that this round of fighting will be the last round of fighting.

We are ready to work with regional and other partners to support a local civilian administration in Gaza, committed to peaceful coexistence.

As for the hostages, I have a message for the Hamas captors: Let them go. Let them go. All of them. Those alive today must be returned alive, and the remains of those whom you brutally killed must be returned to their families. Those families here with us today and others in Israel deserve to have a resting place for their loved ones. A place where they can grieve and remember them.

Ladies and gentlemen, this war can come to an end now. All that has to happen is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages. But if they don’t, we will fight until we achieve victory. Total victory. There is no substitute for it.

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We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of genocide when we defend ourselves against enemies who try to commit genocide against us. We see this too when Israel is absurdly accused by the ICC Prosecutor of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza.

What an absurdity. We help bring in 700,000 tons of food into Gaza. That’s more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman, and child in Gaza. We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of deliberately targeting civilians.

We don’t want to see a single innocent person die. That’s always a tragedy. And that’s why we do so much to minimize civilian casualties, even as our enemies use civilians as human shields.

And no army has done what Israel is doing to minimize civilian casualties. We drop flyers. We send text messages. We make phone calls by the millions to ensure that Palestinian civilians get out of harm’s way. We spare no effort in this noble pursuit.

We see yet another profound moral confusion when self-described progressives march against the democracy of Israel. Don’t they realize they support the Iranian-backed goons in Tehran and in Gaza, the goons who shot down protesters, murder women for not covering their hair, and hang gays in public squares? Some progressives.

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Ladies and gentlemen, King Solomon, who reigned in our eternal capital, Jerusalem, 3,000 years ago, proclaimed something that is familiar to all of you. He said: There is nothing new under the sun.

Well, in an age of space travel, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence, some would argue that’s a debatable statement. But one thing is undeniable: there is definitely nothing new at the United Nations.

Take it from me. I first spoke from this podium as Israel’s ambassador to the UN in 1984. That’s exactly 40 years ago. And in my maiden speech here, I spoke against a proposal to expel Israel from this body. Four decades later, I find myself defending Israel against that same preposterous proposal.

And who’s leading the charge this time? Not Hamas, but Abbas.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. This is the man who claims he wants peace with Israel, yet he still refuses to condemn the horrific massacre of October 7th. He’s still paying hundreds of millions to terrorists who murdered Israelis and Americans.

It’s called Pay for Slay. The more you murder, the more you get paid.

And he still wages unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself. And by the way, they amount to the same thing, because if you can’t defend yourself, you can’t exist. Not in our neighborhood, certainly. And maybe not in yours.

Standing at this podium 40 years ago, I told the sponsors of that outrageous resolution to expel Israel: Gentlemen, check your fanaticism at the door. Today, I tell President Abbas and all of you who would shamefully support that resolution: Check your fanaticism at the door.

The singling out of the one and only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations. It has made this once-respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere. But for the Palestinians, this UN house of darkness is home court. They know that in this swamp of antisemitic bile, there’s an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state for anything. In this anti-Israel flat-earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation can muster a majority.

In the last decade, there have been more resolutions passed against Israel in this hall, in the UN General Assembly, than against the entire world combined. Actually, more than twice as many. Since 2014, this body condemned Israel 174 times.

It condemned all the other countries in the world 73 times. That’s more than 100 extra condemnations for the Jewish state. What hypocrisy. What a double standard. What a joke.

So, all the speeches you heard today, all the hostility directed at Israel this year—it’s not about Gaza; it’s about Israel. It’s always been about Israel. About Israel’s very existence. And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state, is treated like other nations, until this antisemitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.

And given the antisemitism at the UN, it should surprise no one that the prosecutor at the ICC, one of the UN’s affiliated organs, is considering issuing arrest warrants against me and Israel’s defense minister, the democratically elected leaders of the democratic state of Israel.

The ICC prosecutor’s rush to judgment, his refusal to treat Israel with its independent courts the way other democracies are treated, is hard to explain by anything other than pure antisemitism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the real war criminals are not in Israel. They’re in Iran. They’re in Gaza, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Yemen. Those of you who stand with these war criminals, those of you who stand with evil against good, with the curse against the blessing, those of you who do so should be ashamed of yourselves.

But I have a message for you: Israel will win this battle. We will win this battle because we don’t have a choice.

After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves.

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